Surviving Turbulent Times

By now it seems fairly obvious—even to an uninterested observer—that we are living in ever changing turbulent times. For most people, the hectic pace of life, along with economic uncertainty, social unrest, concern for the environment and the need for affordable food supply and health care, creates a stressful and difficult to cope with lifestyle. And it appears that the situation will continue to erode—at least for the foreseeable future. There are many ideas about how to "improve" our lifestyle on both a local and global level. Unfortunately there always seems to be competing ideas from the "experts" in each field leading to confusion about the best line of action to follow—resulting in lack of a long term solution. So what can a person do to live a more balanced lifestyle under the present circumstances and have a positive effect on the situation?
Awhile back my wife and I stumbled across an established practice described in the Dictionary of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga—it is referred to as "equality". It is something anyone can do or incorporate into their present practice. I have reproduced the description from Aurobindo's dictionary to be used if you wish. I found that it was good for me to be reminded of the need to remain calm even in the most stressful or painful situations. For me, there is no doubt that we need more love, calmness and kindness in the world right now. Hopefully that will help to create an environment in which all of us—especially those in leadership—can make decisions for the benefit of all to secure a safe and healthy future for the human race and this planet.
EQUALITY: Not to be disturbed by either joy or grief, pleasure or displeasure, by what people say or do or by any outward things is called in yoga the state of samata [equanimity founded on the sense of the one Divine everywhere], equality to all things.
Equality means a quiet and unmoved mind and vital, it means not to be touched or disturbed by things that happen or things said or done to you, but to look at them with a straight look, free from the distortions created by personal feelings, and to try to understand what is behind them, why they happen, what is to be learnt from them, what is it in oneself which they are cast against and what inner profit or progress one can make out of them; it means self-mastery over the vital movements,—anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest,—not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit. It is not easy to have this equality in any full perfect measure, but one should always try more and more to make it the basis of one's inner state and outer movements.
Equality means another thing —to have an equal view of men and their nature and acts and the forces that move them; it helps one to see the truth about them by pushing away from the mind all personal feeling in one's seeing and judgment and even all the mental bias. Personal feeling always distorts and makes one see in men's actions, not only the actions themselves, but things behind them which, more often than not, are not there.
Equality is the chief support of the true spiritual consciousness and it is this from which a sadhaka [spiritual practitioner] deviates when he allows a vital movement to carry him away in feeling or speech or action. Equality is not the same thing as forbearance,—though undoubtedly a settled equality immensely extends, even illimitably, a man's power of endurance and forbearance.
There can be no firm foundation in sadhana[spiritual path which leads to perfection or means of realization] without equality. Whatever the unpleasantness of circumstances, however disagreeable the conduct of others, you must learn to receive them with a perfect calm and without any disturbing reaction. These things are the test of equality. It is easy to be calm and equal when things go well and people and circumstances are pleasant; it is when they are the opposite that the completeness of the calm, peace, equality can be tested, reinforced, made perfect.
It is necessary to keep equality under pain and suffering —and that means to endure firmly and calmly, not to be restless or troubled or depressed or despondent, to go on with a steady faith in the Divine’s Will. But equality does not include inert acceptance. If, for instance, there is a temporary failure of some endeavour in the sadhana, one has to keep equality, not to be troubled or despondent, but one has not to accept the failure as an indication of the Divine Will and give up the endeavour. You ought rather to find out the reason and meaning of the failure and go forward in faith towards victory.
Without samata peace is liable to be attacked by waves of a lower nature.
Conditions for equality: Complete samata takes long to establish and it is dependent on three things: the soul's self giving to the Divine by an inner surrender, the descent of the spiritual calm and peace from above and the steady, long and persistent rejection of all egoistic, rajasic [passion,effort, action] and other feelings that contradict samata.
Yogic Equality: The equality of soul, equanimity founded on the sense of the one Self, the one Divine everywhere—seeing the One in spite of all differences, degrees, disparities in the manifestation. The mental principle of equality tries to ignore or else to destroy the differences, degrees and disparities, to act as if all were equal or to try and make all equal.
Source: Dictionary of Sri Aurodindo's Yoga, from the writings of Sri Aurobindo compiled by M.P. Pandit, Dipti Publications, Pondicherry, India,1966, p78